Monckton: still digging for failure

by Gareth on July 14, 2010

Stoat alerts me to Monckton’s response (pdf — be warned, it’s an industrial grade whinge) to the epic debunking of one of his 2009 US tour talks by John Abraham . This prompts Eli the lovable lagomorph to crowd-source answers to the 500 questions the potty peer poses for Abraham by way of “reply”. I have been advised by certain sources (who might be expected to know) that the peer is indulging in a little inflation of his credentials. So, let’s have a go at #126…

Monckton objects to being described as having “no background in science”, and advances the following paragraph as evidence to the contrary:

Since I gave advice on a wide range of scientific and technical matters to the British Prime Minister for four years, and ran a successful technical consultancy in the field of public administration for two decades, and have twice very profitably exploited a previously-unsuspected wrinkle in the laws of probabilistic combinatorics, and I have published what is on any view a heavily mathematical paper on the determination of climate sensitivity in a reviewed journal, on what rational basis did you consider it appropriate publicly to disseminate â€“ without any qualification or verification â€“ Dr. Keigwinâ€™s unscientific guess that I had â€œno background in scienceâ€? Is this an instance of the care you take, as â€œa scientistâ€, to verify your facts?

It’s instructive to look at Monckton’s incredibly detailed* curriculum vitae (don’t worry, the only Latin in this post), as published by the political party of which he is joint deputy leader, the somewhat-to-the-right-of-Attila the Hun UK Independence Party (UKIP). From that we can see that he obtained 7 O-Levels (English Language, English Literature, French, Latin, Greek, Elementary Mathematics, Additional Mathematics — the latter being roughly equivalent to one year towards A Level Maths (I know, because I did the same O Level a couple of years after Monckton, though not at Harrow)), and four A Levels — English, Latin, Greek, and Ancient History. Not much science in that lot… He then went to Churchill College, Cambridge and read Classics, followed by a year in Cardiff doing a post-graduate Diploma in Journalism Studies. As his CV notes, he was handy with his pen: “Shorthand (100wpm, 100% accuracy)”. At the point at which he began working for a living, I think it’s perfectly fair to point out that Monckton had “no background in science” — unless you count founding the Harrow bookbinding guild as a contribution to science.

Indeed, given Monckton’s purportedly crucial role, it seems to be heartless ingratitude from the Iron Lady that she does not find room to mention him anywhere in the 914-page volume on her years as prime minister.

Nor does David “Two Brains” Willetts (minister for science & technology in the current UK government, who was in the policy unit at the same time as Monckton) find room to mention him in a prize-winning essay on his time working with Thatcher.

This is what Monckton’s CV has to say:

Special Adviser to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister. Projects included tax/benefit modelling to address poverty; economic modelling to control government spending; sale of publicly-owned houses to their tenants (1,000,000 sold); mathematical development of indexed mortgages (to make them affordable to the poorest); privatisation of water authorities in England and Wales; psephological forecasting by computer; hydrodynamic analysis of warship hull-forms to expose a major Defense fraud; modelling of retrovirus transmission to plan for the HIV crisis; budget control (e.g. Â£20 billion overspend on housing budget prevented); speech-writing; and drafting answers to Parliamentary Questions.

Speech-writing and drafting answers? Just what you’d expect of a junior policy wonk with a journalism background. The other stuff? What you might expect if you play with the bundled spreadsheet app on an early portable computer. [Note: there is a degree of snark in the foregoing, but I wouldn’t overstate it — using spreadsheets in those sorts of applications would have been fairly novel at the time. The management accountants I worked with in Michael Heseltine’s magazine company didn’t get them until the late 80s. But calling it “economic modelling” or “psephological forecasting” is Monckton hyperbole at its finest.]

So what else does Monckton adduce in support of a “science background”? “Technical consultancy in the field of public administration” doesn’t count, nor does designing two puzzles and tweaking the original Sudoku puzzle to get Sudoku X, however abstruse the maths involved may have been. The next sentence is, however, his downfall. He claims his “heavily mathematical” paper on climate sensitivity was published in a “reviewed journal”. Interesting choice of words, Chris. The “paper” was published in a newsletter of the American Physical Society, not in any peer-reviewed journal, and was never subjected to the sort of review that would be routine for any scientific journal. Lucky, really, because Monckton makes so many errors his opus would never have made the grade in the mainstream literature.

The rational basis, therefore, for the assumption that Christopher Monckton, Viscount Brenchley, has no scientific background is that the evidence shows he hasn’t got one. The very best that can be said for him is that he has a facility for maths, a wonderful line in pompous prose and a bee in his bonnet.

[* Final item on CM/VB’s CV: 2008-present: RESURREXI Pharmaceutical: Director responsible for invention and development of a broad-spectrum cure for infectious diseases. Patents have now been filed. Patients have been cured of various infectious diseases, including Gravesâ€™ Disease, multiple sclerosis, influenza, and herpes simplex VI. Our first HIV patient had his viral titre reduced by 38% in five days, with no side-effects. Tests continue. No cure for Monckhausen Syndrome? Shame…]

2. Tabulate the CO2 exhalation rates over the last 15,000 years from (i) terrestrial and submarine volcanism (including maars, gas vents, geysers and springs) and calc-silicate mineral formation, and (ii) CH4 oxidation to CO2 derived from CH4 exhalation by terrestrial and submarine volcanism, natural hydrocarbon leakage from sediments and sedimentary rocks, methane hydrates, soils, microbiological decay of plant material, arthropods, ruminants and terrestrial methanogenic bacteria to a depth of 4 km. From these data, what is the C12, C13 and C14 content of atmospheric CO2 each thousand years over the last 15,000 years and what are the resultant atmospheric CO2 residence times? All assumptions need to be documented and justified.

All as published by the SPPI via WUWT. And cheered on by the Army of the Cynical or Credulous. This is their idea of a case? It’s not even funny – or sad, for that matter – anymore…

Undaunted, Mr Monckton is launching his new Eternity II puzzle, with a prize of $2 million, at the London Toy Fair today. He has enlisted two maths experts to ensure that it cannot be solved by computer.

LOL. With his mathematical expertise, surely he didn’t need to get outside help, did he?

I note that in Monckton’s CV he doesn’t claim to be proficient in a variety of musical instruments. I had thought that was compulsory for people who wish their followers to rate them as a universal genius.

I had a look at the comments on this at WUWT and they’re extraordinary, even by the prevailing standards!

In my universe – and yes, I’ve seen the entire presentation in question – Abraham mounted a very careful argument based on first putting Monckton’s case, and then, where possible, comparing it to his (Monckton’s) own source documents and speaking to the people whose work he’s actually referencing to see if they think his interpretation of their work is fair or reasonable.

In their universe this Churchillian figure of oratory genius has been maligned by ad hominem attacks by some hick who’s not even a proper professor (pause to allow the irony meter to fly off the scale for a moment) from some mid-western ‘bible college,’ and they’ll both be sorry because the great man will take them to the cleaners in the courts!

“hydrodynamic analysis of warship hull-forms to expose a major Defense fraud”

This, I presume, refers to the “Short, Fat Frigate” debate of the 80s in the UK. The Royal Navy design staff were seen as ‘civil servants’, and not to be trusted. Thus when some independent naval architects pushed a ‘revolutionary’ design of a short and fat frigate (as opposed to the traditional long and thin design) the politicos latched onto it as something to beat the ‘civil servants’ with, despite the fact that the ‘civil servants’ were highly qualified naval staff.

Fraud was not ‘proved’, as the laws of physics don’t allow such stuff. The ‘short, fat frigate’ was shown to be unsuitable for use, and all subsequent Royal Navy frigates have been long and thin.

IMHO Monkton is getting pretty close to making a libelous statement, and as usual is completely wrong.

A good book to reference on the issue is G.K.Brown’s “Rebuilding the Royal Navy”.

For another dose of self-aggrandisement by the Leaping Lord, try his CV at SPPI http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/personnel.html . By the way, SPPI stops indexing by search engines and the “backup for posterity” Wayback Machine- you’d think Monckton and his motley crew would be proud to have their statements on the record forever, and proved right by history with their brilliant grasp of physics that evaded PhD climate scientists, and their revelation of the all-scientists-are-communist-sleeper-agents-acting-together-to-promote-a-new-world-order conspiracy.

The Aviator

The Aviator is Gareth's latest book -- the first in a series set in The Burning World. Cover artist Dylan Horrocks describes it as: "a light-hearted journey (by state-of-the-art airship) around a world transformed by climate change and subsequent political collapse. Rock God Evangelists, super-rich survivalists, back-to-nature primitivists, heavily armed luddites, goats with the secret of eternal youth, and a horny artificial intelligence with a taste for bluegrass and classic Hollywood films; The Aviator is a Gulliver-esque romp through a future we hope won’t come to pass."